Greenbush, Madison

Greenbush is a neighborhood of Madison, Wisconsin. Greenbush was founded atop former marshland near Lake Monona. During the early 1900s, it developed as an Italian immigrant neighborhood, and, apart from being the city's Little Italy, it also became home to Jewish, African-American, and Irish populations. Cattails were cut down and replaced by homes, gardens, fruit trees, and grape vines as the neighborhood developed. It became a tighly-knit community nicknamed "the Bush", and its multicultural nature was changed after 1962, when an urban renewal program led to the demolition of several houses.